​Dear editor,We read with interest the detailed description of the exemplary clinical management of a young boxer dog with (presumed familial) renal disease (18 April issue).As the author, Helen Sumner, rightly stated, it is unclear whether the breed has the same disease or is predisposed to more than one renal problem. For the past six years, one of us has been collecting pedigrees of boxers affected by a kidney disease and found:

the condition runs in families

most commonly inbreeding exists on certain dogs, pointing to a recessive inheritance

when the disease occurs in outcross dogs, both parents derive from affected families

the incidence of the disease is low, suggesting a low expression or penetrance

the disease occurs in boxers around the world

crosses between dogs from affected families in different parts of the world (the UK, continental Europe, the US, the antipodes) can produce affected progeny, suggesting a single disease entity is involved.

We are trying to address this familial kidney disease, which we denote as juvenile kidney disease, and wish to continue collecting pedigrees of affected dogs, provided owners are willing to share these. The pedigrees of past British cases, and many from other countries, are reported through www.boxerjkd.com and by emailing bcattanach@steynmere.freeserve.co.ukIt is hoped, by collating information, we will be better able to characterise the disease in these dogs. In addition, a project is being initiated to search for the gene responsible, for which further affected cases are urgently sought.Yours faithfully,Bruce Cattanach, BSc, PhD, DSc, FRS, Emeritus visiting scientist, Medical Research Council Harwell,Harriet Syme, BSc, BVetMed, PhD, DipACVIM, DipECVIM-CA, FHEA, MRCVS, Professor of small animal internal medicine, RVC,William Amos, Professor of evolutionary genetics, University of Cambridge.